Although much has been said about the actions of the Captain of the Costa Concordia, the real heroes of this disaster were the crewmembers.
For starters, ship’s purser Manrico Giampedroni, helped load passengers into lifeboats before setting off to search the decks for more passengers around midnight. Unfortunately, Giampedroni slipped, broke a leg and became trapped. Giampedroni was rescued 36 hours later.
Crewmember Erika Soria from Peru was not so lucky and is still one of the missing crewmembers. According to another crewmember, Erika had boarded a lifeboat after helping evacuate passengers. But the small, overcrowded craft flipped and everyone aboard fell into the sea. Read full story here.
Another crewmember, Rose Metcalf shared her experiences on the BBC Breakfast news show. The dancer from the UK explained how she helped the passengers evacuate. “If you are on a ship, you have a responsibility or duty to help fellow crewmembers and passengers…when events like this happen.”
She explained, “Because of the listing we knew they wouldn’t be able to deploy all of the life rafts on the port side…We were literally throwing each other… We were creating human chains to try and pass people over gaps that if they dropped down there was no recovery from.” Read full story here.
In another interview, James Thomas, a crewmember from the UK, explained how he used his six-foot frame as a human ladder. Mr Thomas said crew members assembled at emergency points as per their training but the ship’s extreme tilt made it virtually impossible to follow the normal evacuation procedures.
He said, “Once it became too much of a tilt to evacuate the ship that’s when it went into chaos…That’s when the port side had to go starboard side and that’s when it became a fight for your life.” Read full story here.
If it weren’t for the actions of many of the crew, the outcome may have been worse.